Instructional Support for Enhancing Students’ Information Problem Solving Ability

Brand-Gruwel, S., & Gerjets, P. (Eds.). (2008). Instructional Support for Enhancing Students’ Information Problem Solving Ability [Special issue]. Computers in Human Behavior, 24(3).This special issue discusses European research on instructional support to foster students’ ability to solve information-based problems. In this introduction, the concept of information problem solving (IPS) and research in this field of interest will be placed in the broader perspective, which is called information behavior. The focus of this special issue is an educational one and the papers all go into a specific kind of instructional support. The main research questions, findings and conclusions of the six contributions will be outlined. It is concluded that the most important directions for future research deal with how instructional support for different aspect of the process, like for instance how to regulated the process, best can be designed in order to make the instruction adaptive and fit to the learners needs

In the eyes of the beholder: How experts and novices interpret dynamic stimuli

Jarodzka, H., Scheiter, K., Gerjets, P., & Van Gog, T. (2010). In the eyes of the beholder: How experts and novices interpret dynamic stimuli. Learning and Instruction, 20, 146-154. doi:10.1016/j.learninstruc.2009.02.019Tasks with a complex, dynamic visual component require not only the acquisition of conceptual/procedural but also of perceptual/attentional skills. This study examined expertise differences in perceiving and interpreting complex, dynamic visual stimuli on a performance and on a process level, including perceptual and conceptual strategies. Performance, eye movement, and verbal report data were obtained from seven experts and 14 novices. Results show that experts compared to novices attend more to relevant aspects of the stimulus, use more heterogeneous task approaches, and use knowledge-based shortcuts. Implications for instructional design for the acquisition of perceptual skills are discussed

Attention guidance during example study via the model’s eye movements.

Van Gog, T., Jarodzka, H., Scheiter, K., Gerjets, P., & Paas, F. (2009). Attention guidance during example study via the model’s eye movements. Computers in Human Behavior, 25, 785-791.Research has shown that guiding students’ attention guides their thought, and that attention can be communicated via eye movements. Therefore, this study investigates whether such a procedure can further enhance the effectiveness of examples in which a solution procedure is demonstrated to students by a (expert) model. Students’ attention was guided by showing them not only the model’s problem-solving actions on the computer screen, but also the model’s eye movements while doing so. Interestingly, results show that combined with a verbal description of the thought process, this form of attention guidance had detrimental effects on learning. Consequences for further research on attention guidance and instructional design are discussed

The two-component model of memory development, and its potential implications for educational settings

We recently introduced a two-component model of the mechanisms underlying age differences in memory functioning across the lifespan. According to this model, memory performance is based on associative and strategic components. The associative component is relatively mature by middle childhood, whereas the strategic component shows a maturational lag and continues to develop until young adulthood. Focusing on work from our own lab, we review studies from the domains of episodic and working memory informed by this model, and discuss their potential implications for educational settings. The episodic memory studies uncover the latent potential of the associative component in childhood by documenting children's ability to greatly improve their memory performance following mnemonic instruction and training. The studies on working memory also point to an immature strategic component in children whose operation is enhanced under supportive conditions. Educational settings may aim at fostering the interplay between associative and strategic components. We explore possible routes towards this goal by linking our findings to recent trends in research on instructional design

A picture amongst pictures: A classification system for instructional visualizations

Jarodzka, H., Imhof., B., & Gerjets, P. (2011, August). A picture among pictures: A classification system for instructional visualizations. Presentation at the EARLI, Exeter, UK.This presentation was about a classification system for visualizations

Conveying clinical reasoning based on visual observation via eye-movement modelling examples

Jarodzka, H., Balslev, T., Holmqvist, K., Nyström, M., Scheiter, K., Gerjets, P., & Eika, B. (2012). Conveying clinical reasoning based on visual observation via eye-movement modelling examples. Instructional Science, 40(5), 813-827. doi:10.1007/s11251-012-9218-5Complex perceptual tasks, like clinical reasoning based on visual observations of patients, require not only conceptual knowledge about diagnostic classes but also the skills to visually search for symptoms and interpret these observations. However, medical education so far has focused very little on how visual observation skills can be efficiently conveyed to novices. The current study applied a novel instructional method to teach these skills by showing the learners how an expert model visually searches and interprets symptoms (i.e., eye-movement modelling examples; EMMEs). Case videos of patients were verbally explained by a model (control condition) and presented to students. In the experimental conditions, the participants received a recording of the model’s eye movements superimposed on the case videos. The eye movements were displayed by either highlighting the features the model focused on with a circle (the circle condition) or by blurring the features the model did not focus on (the spotlight condition). Compared to the other two conditions, results show that a spotlight on the case videos better guides the students’ attention towards the relevant features. Moreover, when testing the students’ clinical reasoning skills with videos of new patient cases without any guidance participants studying EMMEs with a spotlight showed improved their visual search and enhanced interpretation performance of the symptoms in contrast to participants in either the circle or the control condition. These findings show that a spotlight EMME can successfully convey clinical reasoning based on visual observations

Learning perceptual aspects of diagnosis in medicine via eye movement modeling examples on patient video cases

Jarodzka, H., Balslev, T., Holmqvist, K., Nyström, M., Scheiter, K., Gerjets, P., & Eika, B. (2010). Learning perceptual aspects of diagnosis in medicine via eye movement modeling examples on patient video cases. In S. Ohlsson & R. Catrambone (Eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1703-1708). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.Complex tasks with a visually rich component, like diagnosing seizures based on patient video cases, not only require the acquisition of conceptual but also of perceptual skills. Medical education has found that besides biomedical knowledge (knowledge of scientific facts) clinical knowledge (actual experience with patients) is crucial. One important aspect of clinical knowledge that medical education has hardly focused on, yet, are perceptual skills, like visually searching, detecting, and interpreting relevant features. Research on instructional design has shown that in a visually rich, but simple classification task perceptual skills could be conveyed by means of showing the eye movements of a didactically behaving expert. The current study applied this method to medical education in a complex task. This was done by example video cases, which were verbally explained by an expert. In addition the experimental groups saw a display of the expert’s eye movements recorded, while he performed the task. Results show that blurring non-attended areas of the expert enhances diagnostic performance of epileptic seizures by medical students in contrast to displaying attended areas as a circle and to a control group without attention guidance. These findings show that attention guidance fosters learning of perceptual aspects of clinical knowledge, if implemented in a spotlight manner